Page 67 - flying stones

Yevgeniya Pankova or "Zhenya" as she is more easily known as came to
Boston with her father, Victor, in 1999. She was a three year old and was to
undergo the first of what became 7 operations to restore sight to her eyes.
They had been destroyed in a Russian hospital that placed an oxygen mask on
her that was too large and had slipped and burnt the retinas of her eyes. Over
the past 13 years her eyes have been kept healthy, they just don't see.
However, Zhenya and her parents have wasted no time or effort in equipping
her with all the tools needed by a non-sighted person and she handles
technology superbly. She is an almost straight A student in her senior year at
The Georgetown, MA public High School. Her chief interests are in the
sciences, however, she speaks English as fluently as her native tongue of
Russian and uses Braille with the same speed as her other languages.

Victor, Tonya and Zhenya all received Green Cards in 2012 after jumping
through many legal hoops over the past 13 years of their residency here. This
certainty of her status here in America has relaxed Zhenya's concern for being
returned to a country of which she has no memory. She is a regular 16 year
old American as of August 6, 2013 and looks forward to applying for colleges
during this her senior year. Her advocates in Manchester, MA, Mac and Peggy
Coleman, are as happy as she and her parents are to be here.

Peggy Coleman
2013